


Between Heaven and Earth

by fresne



Category: Scarborough Fair - Simon & Garfunkel (song)
Genre: Angels, F/M, Fay - Freeform, Female Protagonist, Misses Clause Challenge, POV Female Character, Yuletide 2014, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 00:05:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2830922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Thistle was a girl, she'd loved the Fair something fierce. </p><p>Folks came from all round the world to the Scarborough Fair.</p><p>For on Assumption Day, the White Lady, the Queen of Air and Light, would float down to the dry well in the centre of the city of Scarborough and announce that the doors between Heaven and Earth were open for the dead of the world to ascend. </p><p>The Lord under the Mountain, the King of Earth and Darkness would ride out of the moors and into the city with his wild court and announce a time of celebration. </p><p>Everyone in Scarborough knew that the Lord under the Mountain loved the White Lady. Each year he rode into the city and made the thorn bush hang heavy with fruit that the White Lady would decline with a smile.</p><p>Thistle didn't think the Lady and the Lord had much to do with her. She was right and she was wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between Heaven and Earth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [salifiable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/salifiable/gifts).



When Thistle was a girl, she'd loved the Fair something fierce. Everyone loved the Fair. 

Folks came from all round the world to the Scarborough Fair. 

Great ships with wide pregnant sails would blow into the harbour on tethered winds. Some bearing bearded wise folk from Byzantium in great jewelled robes that would flash and sparkled on a summer's day, and so much paint on their faces it was impossible to tell if they were men or women. Some bearing dark skinned Moors with their white robes that became hawks and told of the sights they saw high above the world. Some bearing silk robed magicians from the empire of the Chin and their nimble acrobatic sons and daughters. 

For on Assumption Day, the White Lady, the Queen of Air and Light, would float down to the dry well in the centre of the city of Scarborough and announce that the doors between Heaven and Earth were open for the dead of the world to ascend. She was accompanied by a Heavenly host of burning beings that some called angels and other devas in accordance with their beliefs. For the next six weeks, that dry well bubbled with the freshest cleanest water a soul ever tasted. Good water that healed the ills of world. 

The Lord under the Mountain, the King of Earth and Darkness would ride out of the moors and into the city with his wild court and announce a time of celebration. At that time, the thorn bush growing by the well, which hadn't bloomed since Adam was born, bore blackberries plump and sweet. 

Everyone in Scarborough knew that the Lord under the Mountain loved the White Lady and grew the berries to tempt her, though such a love was as impossible a thing as ever could be. Each year he rode into the city and made the thorn bush hang heavy with fruit that the White Lady would decline with a smile. 

As Thistle grew older, Thistle's Mam told her to be careful of the gambolling fawns and the fox lords and eating the fruit of that tree. She wasn't to share her name. But everyone knew that. All girls of Scarborough would giggle and say their names were Parsley or Sage or Rosemary or Thyme. All the boys of Scarborough would snicker and say their names were Michael or Gabriel or Raphael or Uriel. 

Everyone knew that it was safe to tryst with the human or fey when eating those blackberries. The angels were another matter and every year, nine months later, a girl would be shamed to push out a Nephilim that was the price of Fair fun. Though, Thistle often wondered at it, given that for every Angel who appeared as a man on fire, which was bad enough, still others were spinning wheels of fire and others were the whirlwind. 

Not that the Nephilim were so terrible at birth. They looked much like any babe, squished and red. It was as they grew that their terrible beauty took its toll, warping minds and hearts of humans with the weight of their burning tread upon the earth. 

That was no matter to Thistle. 

When Thistle was sixteen, she was half wild, for all her Mam tried to teach her better, and half grown. She played games rough and running at the Fair and halfway flirted as she thought a woman might do. She was playing at her skill skipping rocks upon the waves when she met Thorn, or so he called himself with a flick of his wrist that set his rock skipping some twenty times across the waves. 

She was so incensed at magic over skill that she tackled him and threatened to rip out his tiny black horns. He was so astonished, he gapped up at her with his yellow goat's eyes in his hillock green face and begged very gravely for forgiveness, which she granted as soon as she realized just how she was sitting on him. 

For the next six weeks, they raced about the Fair, watching its wonders. He called her Rosemary, for that was the name she gave him. She called him Thorn, for that was the name he gave her. 

They played as children might do, but all the while Thistle's breasts prickled with the weight of Thorn's gaze. 

The only break in their pleasures was when a Nephilim, who'd been concealed by her Mother in Whitby, incited a riot against the Lord under the Mountain, and he was pierced with cold iron. Thorn quite abandoned Thistle for three whole days, which was how she came to sit with her friends at their giggling. Which was how they dared her to eat a handful of blackberries and have a taste of Fair fun. 

They said, "You won't ever do it. Not Thistle!" 

Which was how she vowed that she would. She spent all of one night weaving a cambric shirt out of torn strips of cloth and dying it a deep, deep red with blackberry juice, as all the girls in Scarborough did when they wanted a fey to come calling. Her Mam chided her for the lost tallow that they could ill afford. She sighed and said, "After this year's Fair, you must settle down. If your Da were alive, he'd tell you the same." 

Thistle ignored her, for what her Mam said wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She waited then two more days for Thorn to melt out of the shadows, as the fey sometimes did. She was so weary of waiting she shoved him back with a blow to his shoulder and blushing, ran to the thorn bush and gulped a handful down of berries down. 

It was sweet and dark in her mouth. It stained the cracks on her lips bright red and her cheeks flushed with the desire that was in her. 

Thorn's voice cracked like a high pipe when he said, "Rosemary, yes. Make me a cambric shirt, Without seams or needlework, then you'll be a true love of mine." 

She almost couldn't remember what she was supposed to reply until she heard the giggling behind her. She turned over her shoulder and even flushed with new desire, she glared at her so called friends and said, "I remember, now shut your mouths." She spat out, "Buy me an acre of land, between the salt water and the sea, and then you'll be a true love of mine." 

Thorn had a deep green flush to his cheeks. Other Fey, in their rich coats of moss velvet green and deep forest black, snickered to each other. "You've a live fire there. Best look for another one less likely to burn your hand." 

But Thorn hissed something over his shoulder in the language of the earth and they quieted. He said to Thistle, "Wash that shirt in yonder well when Michaelmas is done, and then you'll be a true love of mine." 

Thistle didn't like the looks Thorn's friends were giving her. She knew they must have thought she was too young or plain or a silly human from Scarborough and nothing grand or far away. She stepped close enough to smell the forest in Thorn's breath and said, "Plough that land with a ram's horn and sew it all over with one," she held up her finger and did not care there was dirt under the finger, "just one peppercorn. Then you'll be a true love of mine." 

Thorn's eyes were wide and his breath was quite shallow. He whispered, "Dry that shirt on yonder thorn, without getting a stain, then you'll be a true love of mine." 

They stared at each other without moving. Their friends laughed around them. Other people ate berries and sped through the words and went off for their Michaelmas tumbles. But not Thistle and Thorn. They just stood there looking into each other's eyes through all the last Michaelmas Day. Until the White Lady ascended back to her heaven and the Lord under the Mountain sounded his horn. Thistle shoved the shirt she'd woven at Thorn, as with a start he sprang away from her. He took it and whispered, "Come with me." 

Which startled a laugh from her lips, but she'd no time for explanations as he ran from her clutching the shirt that she'd made for him. 

Thistle had nothing from her meal of berries but damp nethers and stained lips. 

Leastwise, she didn't give birth to a Nephilim come the nine months. That was Jane Chandler's lot with her baby taken from her when it was but a few hours old and given to the Green Man of York to raise as a member of the Wild Hunt, for that was the only way to contain a Nephilim's terrible beauty. 

She went home to her Mam, who hugged her and said, "Now, little Thistle, it's all for the best. Time to look around for a good solid man, and settle down." 

Trouble was, Thistle loved the Fair, but when it were done, Scarborough became the backside of nowhere in her eyes. Dull as dirt and quiet as the grave. She felt it filling in over her face every hour that tolled from the Church bell. 

By the next Annunciation Day, when the White Lady floated down to earth, Thistle had long since run away to London Town. 

Oh, she was in love with her man, Gerry, and his wicked smile and wicked way of pleasing her and all his tales of the wealth they'd have there. That they fell to thieving was the path of ruin her Mam had said she'd fall into. That she ran their gang of roughs in the thick foggy muck of London Town was how it had to be. She was quick with a knife and her wits, and could cut a dozen purses from belts before breaking her morning fast. She could smile as sweet as honey and lie like she'd just eaten from the tree of good and evil. 

She hardly thought of Scarborough. Really, but once. When all the gossip was of a Nephilim who'd attacked the White Lady, but that the Lord under the Mountain stopped the blade with his breast and how something must be done. By the King or by Parliament, no one was certain who. She lifted purses as she listened and felt a wistful twinge. 

She and Gerry had a child in that wicked town, but lost him to the sickness. She supposed it was the glums of that loss that made her careless. For they were caught but once by a Thieftaker, and it was then. As they took her before the judge, she pled her belly and made sure it were true. She got off with a "T" branded into her forehead and a baby on the way. Gerry and most of her crew weren't so lucky and danced before the crowds on Tyburn Hill. 

She should have left then. But she dealt to that Thieftaker as he'd dealt, and ran a crew twice as tough. She burned the brand from her forehead with her own knife. Her Little Rose was born in a rookery surrounded by stolen plate and silk scarves. Little Rose teethed on a stolen gold spoon. Thistle told herself that it was for the best. Except for Little Rose's cough and wheeze in the smoke of London Town. 

She thought back to her girlhood dreams of adventure and wondered how it had all come to this muck. 

One morning, she bound Little Rose up in with all her stolen goods and set off walking. She just left that life behind. 

She walked days and weeks until she came back to the Yorkshire moors. Until she came to the Green Mountain betwixt two spits of the sea and there was an empty cottage just sitting there with its door hanging off the hinge and mice running in and out. Tired as she was, she pulled out her knife and checked it room by room, but there weren't no one there. She fell asleep in the rocking chair. Woke up to the most awful racket. 

For as it happened, come the night, the Green Mountain was scarlet with war. Not with blood. All the blood to be had was long since spilled. A red coated battalion marched outside the cottage. Romans and Picts and Knights and Roundheads. They were all there. The drummers beat their drums and the pipers played their pipes. The moon shone through the tatters of their souls; so many ghosts always marching up the mountain to wars they couldn't even remember why they were fighting. 

Thistle settled on the Green Mountain and it was better to her in its way than London Town had ever been. There was an acre wide field full of barley corn. She cut down a harvest with a strap of leather and put it up with some heather for fodder. There was an apple tree heavy with fruit and Thistle had money from her wickeder days to purchase a cow with a belly full of a calf. People in the village at the foot of the mountain thought she was mad to live with the ghosts and the fey under the mountain. She thought they were mad to live below it. The Wild Hunt was a plague on the moor and not the Green Mountain. 

What bothered her were the ghosts she'd left behind in London. What bothered her was tales of the Fair up in Scarborough, and how she longed to see it again. But she wasn't a young girl anymore. She had a shiny scar on her forehead from where she'd burned that T away. She had blood under her fingers. She wondered time to time if Thorn had looked for her ever again. 

She'd been weeks living there with the ghosts before she'd seen hide nor hair of any fey. She saw just one. A distant figure with curling black hair over skin brown as clay and a gleam of moonlight on the black curve of the ram's horns growing from his brow. She felt foolish doing it, but she took the cap from an acorn and put a little milk in it from her cow. She set it outside the door she'd rehung. She was after all living on the fey's mountain. 

She supposed that was what drew him closer when Little Rose was old enough to run about yelling "No," to make Thistle want to tear her hair out. 

He crept, if such a broad tall figure striding about in a coat green velvet as moss could be said to creep, closer and closer. She'd been standing in her yard in the long stretch of evening twilight looking at her herd of one steer that she'd spent the summer fattening up among the ghosts, when he come close enough to talk. She though he might look a bit like Thorn for all that he was as brown as Thorn had been green, but she supposed that just must be wistfulness at chattering in her skull. 

She offered him an acorn cap of milk and he took it. Somehow making it look dainty and not a bit silly in his long fingered hands. He bowed to her and said, "I am the Lord under the Mountain." He had the sort of voice that was like a sack a gravel in a velvet purse. She'd thought the King of Earth and Darkness to be a good deal older, but she supposed that she'd never gotten close enough to tell. 

She curtseyed sort of awkward, but it got the job done. "I'm Tom." Because she was well past the age of claiming to be Parsley, Sage, Rosemary or Thyme, but there weren't no way she was giving a Fairy Lord of any sort her real name. 

Little Rose yelled, "I'm Little Rosie," and ran through the mud managing to catch all the puddles. 

Sort of thing that made Thistle want to spit, but she kept her smile on. Weren't no point in going for the knife of good steel on her belt. Not yet. 

Lord bowed that horned head of his at Little Rose and said, "Well, met Tom and Little Rosie." He sipped his milk and seemed to be wanting to say something a bit further. He looked down at his hands. After a fair piece of sipping, he said, "Are you going to Scarborough Fair?" 

Thistle laughed, almost forgetting who she was talking to. "No. I lived there once and saw the Fair plenty of times, but no. That's all past me now. I'll be selling my cattle a good deal closer to home than that." 

"Ah," he said, looking a bit down trod and disappointed. He sipped his milk. "I'd hoped if you did, you'd remember me to one who once lived there. She was once was a true love of mine." 

Seemed an odd thing for the Lord of the Mountain to say, for he'd loved the White Lady for as long as there had been Fairs, but she supposed even true love allowed for the occasional tumble. Certainly hers had done. 

"Fair enough," she said, "But I'm not heading that way." But because she was lonely, she said, "Come sit on my porch, and tell me of your true love." 

He shook his head no, but he followed her and sat elegant as a king on the old bench made of pine logs. "Her name is Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme." 

"That's a long name for one girl." Thistle watched Little Rose splashing in puddles. In the distance, she could hear a General in his ghostly braided coat yelling, "Shoot when you see the whites of their eyes!" and the popping echo of gunfire. 

He sighed. "All the women of Scarborough have one of those four names. I use all four that I might always call her by the name that is hers." 

Thistle leaned forward with her arms on her knees, watching Little Rose play in the muck. "You know that's not their true names, right?" 

"Tom," he smiled a wicked smile that put a dart straight through her heart, "she never comes when I call and blow my horn. So, I well have reason to know that's not her name, or I'd long have whisked her away beneath my mountain." 

Thistle straightened away from that smile. She called out to Little Rose. "Little Love, come closer, the soldiers will march over the hill soon." 

"No,"' yelled Little Rose, because at five as it had been at two, it was her favourite word, but at Thistle's look she came close and sat down beside her between her and Lord. 

The soldiers formed their lines and got on one knee and fired. While behind them others rammed powder down the barrels of their guns for their turn. 

They watched the soldiers for a time, but Lord didn't say anything more about his true love. Instead, between one breath and another, she turned around and he was gone. 

Thistle knew the soldiers had long since forgotten who they were fighting and why, but still she watched the soldiers fight their way up the mountain until Little Rose's eyes drooped, and she put her to bed. 

In the town, she made good money on the sale of her grass fat cattle. Enough to buy new calves in the spring. Enough to buy seed for vegetables in a garden. Years passed and Little Rose sprouted. 

She saw Lord time to time. Most often, she saw him up on the mountain while she was driving the cattle up into the high green meadows. When Little Rose was little, they'd go together. Camp on the mountain, watching over their herd chew grass amid the ghosts. Sometimes Lord would appear by their fire and tend it with waves of his hand. Other times, he made flowers grow by night and fruit hang heavy on trees. 

When she was seven, Little Rose, who'd given up on no in favour of always asking questions, asked, "How come if you're the Lord Under the Mountain, you're always up here? Why do you have horns? Why are there so many ghosts? Mam says there aren't this many ghosts in London Town, for all that there are more people dying there." 

Thistle gave Little Rose a tap of her toe on her heel. "Your Mam also says not to ask so many questions." Ordinarily, this was when she'd have gone for a tickle attack, but with Lord's eyes on her, she was feeling out of sorts. But because that sort of thing made her fierce, she tickled Little Rose anyway, who giggled and screamed. 

Lord laughed and it was boom of a sound. Not like the ghost cannons or the crack of the winter ice on the mountain peak, but something that made Thistle feel warm all over. She hugged Little Rose close to her and told Lord, much as she'd told half the village of Bend on River Nee at the bottom of Green Mountain, "You don't have to answer her." 

Lord touched a silver chain half hidden under his coat of velvet and with a start Thistle realized it was strung with dozens of acorn caps and she knew without being told she'd served him milk in those acorn cups. "Do I not? You fed me. You gave me a lie for a name. You laughed with me." He'd bent forward and his face was golden in the firelight. "Mistress Rosie." Little Rose nodded, quiet for once, "I do not go beneath the mountain, because foolishly I gave away my heart at Scarborough Fair and it is above the mountain where I wait keeping an acre of land for my love well seeded with barley between the salt and the sea. I wear the horns that are my crown, as my uncle did before me, and his aunt before him. As to the ghosts," he glanced off into the dark where pipes were giving the clarion call of war, "Your Mam may be as a beautiful as a prickly thistle that grows wild and strong on the hill, but she is quite wrong about them. There are just as many ghosts in London Town. It's just harder to see them where the air is thick with coal smoke and cold iron. Why else would the White Lady come to Earth each year to gather the ghosts to her?" 

Thistle waited for the old needle pang in her heart for Gerry, but she could hardly remember his face, and Little Rose was more likely the daughter of a guard than of her Gerry so wicked and wild. 

Sitting there by the fire with Lord, she thought once more of Thorn, and wondered if he ever thought of her. She felt a prickle in her breasts that could lead to nothing good. All the more so because Lord had no reason to want a woman who'd used herself so in the world. So, she'd hugged Little Rose all the harder and gave her further tickles for her laughter. 

When Little Rose had sprouted nine years, they spent a hard day driving the herd up along the narrow trails. Higher than they'd even gone before to the sweetest green daisied pasture Thistle'd ever seen with a white brook babbling away. Thistle was so focused on seeing to the calves that she tripped over the old stone gravestone half hidden by silvery leaves from the copse of willow trees. 

As she lay on the ground, Rook, her dog licked worriedly at her face, and whined, while Little Rose worried. Licking wasn't much help, but made Thistle feel a bit better and less of a fool. Thistle gave Rook a scratch and a pat, and her daughter a sharp look, as she looked at the grave. It weren't so much a grave the more she looked at it. It was some kind of carved stone that had been broken in half. Bottom half was a maiden carved pretty as you please. Top half lying overgrown in the grass was carved with a serpent eating its own tail chipped at with bullet scars. 

She made the rock their seat while she set a fire and ate a mix of dried fruit and jerked meat for their meal. 

Little Rose was so tired, she couldn't hardly hold her eyes open when the first clarion call of battle was sounded. Then again, she'd heard it every day for years. Thistle smiled at her little child of the mountain as she shipped her safe into their tent. 

Thistle slept by the fire and woke up suddenly sometime when the crescent of the moon was fit to set over the snow crested tip peak. Rook was whining at someone by the fire, who was urging it higher with a wave of his hand. 

Thistle pushed herself out of her blankets with one hand on her knife. "Lo." 

"Hello, Tom," said Lord, and she'd have known his deep gravel wrapped in velvet voice anywhere. He held his hands to the flames and laughed softly. "Where is Little Rosie?" 

He asked that every time he appeared. She said, "Asleep in our tent yonder," but that time she added, "The sleep of the dead." 

He hummed and it was a sort of lure she didn't want to resist. She moved over by the fire and sat next to him, and it felt good to sit there. She felt her breasts prickling at her bodice. They sat for a time, until he sighed something fierce. He said, "Tom," his face was flickering serious in the firelight. "Are you going to Scarborough Fair?" That old question. 

For some reason, maybe it was just all the years of being asked, she said, "Yes, I've been thinking to take Little Rosie to see all its wonders." 

A breathe gusted out of him. Those odd eyes of his were wide. He pulled a tattered red shirt from beneath his coat. He said, "Take this and remember me to one who lived there. She once was a true love of mine. Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme." 

She took the shirt and smiled sadly at it. She wondered how many girls wove shirts for their fey lovers over the years. She nodded. "I'll do it." 

His "Hmmm…" went straight through the curve of her ears and down to wetting southern regions. Her thoughts had been tending that way more and more over the years. "Tell her, that she must make me cambric red shirt without any seam, and then she'll be a true love of mine." 

Thistle snorted. "Seems she'd already given you such a thing, and you've worn that love out." 

He sat very still. "Tell her to find me an acre of land between salt water and the sea strand. Then she'll be a true love of mine." 

Thistle snorted again. "Tall task, but true love can do anything can't it? Certainly mine promised me all the pleasures of London Town." 

His hand was next to hers on the stone, and for all he was speaking of other loves, she itched to cover it with her own. "Tell her to reap the land with some leather and wrap what she reaps in good sturdy heather, and then she'll be a true love mine." 

Thistle said, "I'll tell her your impossible tasks." 

Lord smiled something sweet and wistful at her. They sat together under the stars talking of nothing and no thing. 

Thistle tended the fire as the battalion marched up the hill. The soldiers came into the meadow and laughing, one of them far taller and more terrible than the rest, turned his musket in their direction. Thistle jumped out of the way, because they might be ghosts, but she wasn't sitting in the path of any sort of gun. 

But the ghosts kept pointing at Lord, who melted away into the dark with a sigh. The Maiden stone seemed whole again for a moment. Until the terrible soldier shot it and it toppled in half once more into the grass. 

Thistle watched them march away through the meadow to the rest of their battle on the far side of the mountain. She told herself not to be silly and get her sleep. She crawled under blanket, but couldn't get sleep back. She kept to the solitary task of watching over the cows on the mountain. There wasn't much to it. 

Little Rose woke with a grump and a jerk. 

Thistle had them pry up the stone that day. On the side pressed into the dirt was the figure of a man surrounded by waves or maybe they were folds in the mountain. She brushed him clean and dug up the bottom half of the stone. Nothing could make it whole again, but she dug a groove in the earth to lay it on its side with the two halves joined together. 

It was a waste of their time, but they had time to waste as the cattle grew fat on the grass of Green Mountain. 

Thistle and Little Rose laid out snares and caught a brace of rabbits, which made for a better dinner than provender. She cooked them over the fire watching the sun set and the moon sail over the top peak of the mountain. Little Rose fell asleep by the fire as Lord said, "Good evening, Tom. The stars are lovely and bright." 

Thistle swallowed and nodded. Aching all over and she couldn't have said why. She only knew if he'd asked, she'd have said yes to getting him the moon. She'd never wanted to feel this way again, but wanting didn't stop the feeling of it. 

He smiled up at the wide swath of milky stars running cross the sky. He smiled for a time at the Lord stone propped up against the Maiden. He said, "You've repaired the stone that the Nephilim broke." 

She frowned and he laughed bitter as sage. "Tom, the mountain is rife with the ghosts of Nephilim. Who do you think urges the soldiers to all their wars. Whether the Green Man raises them or they are hidden by their mothers, they always grow tall and full of hatred of both what's in Heaven and below the Earth. They come here to destroy the places where we celebrate." 

His lips twisted down. "That is how my uncle fell, these eleven years ago." He shook his head, "But I'd not speak of such things tonight." Lord's eyes were all gold and red by the firelight. They slipped a leisurely gander down her seated on her blanket by the fire. "The moonlight suits you." 

Thistle felt out of sorts with this talk of Nephilim and death. When she was out of sorts, she bristled. She said, "What you're saying is by daylight you can see my winkles and grey hairs." 

"I'm saying that you look lovely." He waved his hand and Little Rose floated ever so light into their tent as Lord sat down next to Thistle on the blanket. She didn't object when he pressed a kiss to her cheek. She didn't object when he pressed two or three. She may even have made a kiss of her own. Seeing as she unlaced her own bodice, it was easy to see how his hand made its way inside to touch breasts more used to being mashed with bindings that the shivering glide of fingers. She was so well on her way into kisses that she hardly noticed when the soldiers marched up the mountain. They were behind the Maiden stone anyway. She only flinched when the sparrows began to announce the morning and Lord melted away, leaving her aching with a damp feeling down in her southern regions. 

She'd have spent the next day mostly mooning about, but a calf took it into its head to climb a rock pile and needed help down, and Little Rose was half again in a mood. 

Still it was foolish to wash herself in the stream. It was foolish to hope for the sunset. It were foolish to notice the blackberries hanging heavy on the thorns. She ate her handful and loosened her bodice. She wanted a lover, and who better than the Lord under the Mountain whose heart was already given away. He appeared, sweet as a trick when the long twilight fell. Far in the distance, she could hear the sound of battle drums and pipers and clarion calls. She could see Little Rose's eyes drop like stones and her float away into their tent. 

All that she cared for was that Thorn said, "Good evening… Tom." That voice deep as the mountain lingered on around the name that wasn't hers. 

She knew better. She did, still she said, "My name is Thistle," because she could not help but say it. 

"Ah, Thistle," he said with a whisper against her cheek, that set her to shivering. "Do you know the names of the stars in the sky?" 

She supposed they had names that important folks had given them. Names had power. But she named the names she and Little Rose had given them on the long hours on the mountain watching over the cattle. Each name earned her a kiss. She shivered though not from cold as she lost her bodice and the chemise from her back. She cried out names as he pressed kisses to her breasts, more used to bindings than anything so sweet. She chanted them as he unbound her from her skirts and laid her bare under those stars. She made up names as he slipped sweet as you please out of his fine velvet coat and shirt of fine lace. 

She gripped those horns of his tight as he pressed his wick into the wet ache of her, but it weren't nothing of a hurt. This was a sweet pounding that she'd wanted for many a year. That she urged on under the stars. Even as the shirt he'd given her lay pillowed under her head. Still, she was sleepy and warm when the soldiers came to break up the tryst and Lord disappeared to wherever it was he went. 

If she'd lived a different life, maybe she'd have cried a tear or two. But instead she wrapped herself in her blanket and idly held a hand to tease her own breast hardly sleeping through the night, while soldiers roamed the mountain fighting a hundred battles long since lost and won. 

She was even humming as she and Little Rose herded the cattle from the meadow with a whistle for Rook. They made their way around the folds of the mountain until they came to a lovely meadow, as lovely as the last, where a ring of stones stood protected the earth. Little Rose set to climbing on the one stone that was on its side and shattered in two. It was as good a place as any. Thistle made their camp and set her snares and thought a bit dreamily of the sore ache in her southern regions. 

As she saw the blackberries hanging from the thorns, she ate a handful. 

Still, she honestly wasn't expecting to hear Rook whine and see Lord sitting pretty as you please right there next to her on the blanket where Little Rose had been sitting but a moment before, and now was snoring in their tent. He said, "Can you tell me the names of all the rivers that run to the sea. She couldn't, so she named them after the members of her old gang in London town. He made fast work of her clothes as she recounted the twists and turns of Gentleman Jim and the bends of Old Marge. They made as much sport in the ring, as they had by the Lord and Maiden stone. If interrupted this time by Romans in their red cloaks, who shattered the ring of stones, which seemed the cue for Lord to fade away, leaving her sore and content, if alone. 

She was foolish all the summer long with Lord. Little Rose had never slept so well. She told herself it was just scratching a long held itch and nothing more. She gripped him tight in the circle and she rode him well when she camped by the menhir on the southern slope. If she regretted the Romans and knights and rough spun revivers who interrupted them each night, she regretted more the quickly shortening days. 

That's what she was at, regrets, as she and Little Rose returned to their cottage on Annunciation Day, when a sparrow traced its way to them on snow crested brown. It piped, "My Lord under the Mountain has been captured by the Nephilim of the Wild Hunt. They've turned against the Green Man of York, and seduced all of the wise men and wizards in Scarborough to their bidding. They've taken the White Lady and my Lord and bound them beneath the earth with cold iron and lamb's blood to hold all others off." 

Thistle stood up straight. She had half a mind to go to London Town where she could gather a crew as rough and wild as any the world had seen. But years among dead soldiers had its own toll as well. Instead she said, "I will have to free them." She looked at Little Rose. "If your grandmam's still alive, I'll leave you with her to watch over you." 

Little Rose had a quirk to her lips. "Mam, if you leave me behind, I'll only follow after." 

Thistle acknowledged the truth of this. "Then we'd best practice your best simple face. And it were best that you be a boy." 

They went to Scarborough, but not for the Fair. 

Thistle marched them up to the castle and presented herself with a fierce smile. A Nephilim with wild white hair and burning gold eyes laughed at her. "Who's this?" Now for a moment, just a moment, she felt his terrible beauty, but she had a mean streak in her soul that made her reject that feeling with a shove. 

She said, "I'm Mistress Rosemary, Nephilim, sir. My child you see before you is a child such as you, but the angel that pierced me didn't see fit to give her wits or care about any miracle. So I've come to serve any as would put them to their misfortune." She glowed with rage. Little Rose was a delight of confusion. It would seem she had a talent for grift in her blood. 

They were sent to the kitchens. Thistle were told to wear a cap to hide her forehead. She stopped by the kitchen and grabbed a knife, since she hadn't been able to bring her own through the door, and one for Little Rose, who'd knew the sharp end well enough when gutting rabbits. They headed vague eyed down into the dungeons. When they were asked why they were headed there, Little Rose started going on about wanting a miracle, while Thistle said, "I was told to come here to pinch a miracle for my girl." 

The Nephilim were guarded against Angels and Fey. Not against a woman and her girl with knives. To Thistle's regret, she did use her blade on the last two guards, who did not believe her. Nephilim they were, but young. She'd come far enough away from her life in London to regret that slit of her knife. Little Rose blinked at her with new understanding and it hurt to have her girl know her like that. 

Still they'd come too far to jolt on regret. She set to picking the padlock around the White Lady's gleaming ankle. The White Lady said, "Thistle. How wonderful to see you. I remember when you were a girl and I gave you a cup of water when you were sick. How you laughed." 

"Yes, Mam," said Thistle, though she remembered no such thing. Thistle grunted because picking a lock with a butcher's knife was no easy trick. 

A good thing that the White Lady turned the cold iron into ivy. "Much easier don't you think?" 

They found Lord bound up in cold iron. He gasped as the White Lady freed him by turning his chains into thistle stalks. 

He said, "Lady!" 

She replied, "Well met Lord Under the Mountain." 

Thistle didn't want to watch them at a reunion. "We've no time for chatter. Move on." 

Little Rose went ahead being a fool and singing about her True Love when they were to come close and singing about the Ghosts of Green Mountain when they were to wait. 

Oh, time to time, Thistle told bedazzled guards that she was transporting the prisoners, "because I's been told to." She called on years of grifting skill and they believed her. They made it to the tower and the White Lady just floated up and was soon swarmed with burning fire, which was just as well. 

Lord took Thistle's right hand in his own, and Little Rose with this left and stepped them off the edge of the tower and walked them into a cloud. Thistle's eyes blinked once and twice and she woke up in Lord's arms. She blinked at him with the White Lady glowing benignly from the window. She struggled up. "But your True Love, she floats there." 

Lord frowned at her. "My Uncle's True Love you mean, when he was King of Earth and Darkness, before Air and Brightness took him up for the heart bound blade he took to defend her." 

Thistle wanted to protest, but protesting made her feel foolish, which made her angry, so she hit him on the shoulder. 

He laughed. "Thistle, the Fey are fickle it's true, but when we promise, we mean it. I was your Thorn, and you my True Love proved." He looked away from her. "If I was not so to you, that does not mean you were not so to me." 

She hit him again and she kissed him. Then she shoved him back. "How can you be Thorn? He was bright green and you are dark brown." 

He nudged her with a curving black horn upon his head. "As a branch is green when young and grows brown as it ages. Just as my voice and berries dropped down and my stick and horns grew in. Just as your breasts filled in and your hips also, and," 

She stopped his lips with a kiss. "Enough of that." 

She kissed him and considered. "I've eaten the blackberries true, but I'd like to quicken with the sport we make, but how would that go? Love is good and sweet, but how will your court handle such an heir, nor would I want such a burden for my child." 

He shrugged. "As well as any changeling. As my niece, my sister's child, will wear the horns in her time, it matters not." 

Thistle decided that it was all in all good enough. She considered love. 

Though there was no need to go to Scarborough Fair, still they did, with Little Rose occupied playing games with fawns amid the stalls. 

Lord put on the shirt without seam that Thistle'd woven for him. Thistle slid a daisy chain of softened thorns without bite around her own neck. 

They kissed by the dry well and drank its blessed water, and were true loves to each other.

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


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